Opinion | Students should feel safe on the Pitt shuttles

When students get on the shuttles across Pitt’s Oakland campus, they expect to get where they need to go efficiently and safely. But over the course of my six weeks back on campus, there has been a shocking lack of safety practices. I can count three separate instances of shuttle drivers openly driving distracted while I am a passenger. In addition, the shuttles are continuously unreliable, the drivers rude and the routes inconsistent. 

Distracted driving on the shuttles has shocked me, although it is only my second year as a Pitt student. Up until now, I have had only positive experiences on the Pitt shuttles, and as a student previously living in Sutherland Hall, I had a large sample size to draw from. This positive experience on the shuttles is part of the reason why I felt good about my choice to live in Panther Hall for my second year. However, this year, I’ve already had many negative experiences with the shuttle service.

Chief among my complaints is the shockingly common instance of distracted and reckless driving. During one of my first rides on the shuttles this fall semester, it was particularly shocking when the driver was watching TikTok with his phone’s Bluetooth connected to the bus speakers. In addition to being illegal, it also made the bus hitting the curb when entering the Residences on Bigelow much more disconcerting. This behavior is not just a one-off, either. On Sept. 9, the driver had his phone propped up against the AC vents and was watching Monday Night Football while driving me home. These instances can cause real harm — one in 10 fatal accidents in America is caused by distracted driving, and with a vehicle as large as a shuttle, that risk only grows.

These instances of dangerous driving are unacceptable and contribute to an unsafe campus, but these concerns assume that students can even find a shuttle to get home. Another issue with the shuttles new to this year is their unreliability. Last year, when students needed to get back to their dorm, they could typically check the TransLoc app, and they could get an estimate on when the next shuttle would arrive at their stop. 

However, this year, TransLoc has lost much of its functionality for me, as I’ve noticed many of the shuttles don’t appear even when they are running.

Usually, when this occurs, students can wait at their shuttle stop as long as the official shuttle calendar indicates the shuttle should be running. Yet this year, shuttles will seemingly not operate even when the official schedule says they should be. In the past week, I have sat waiting for a shuttle for 30 minutes only to conclude that TransLoc had accurately reported that no shuttles were running. While inconvenient for me, this lack of information and consistent irregularity of the shuttle service can be a real issue for students who rely on the shuttles to get to and from class, including injured or disabled students which make up about 2-10% of the student population.

While it is impossible to know what has contributed to these failures in the shuttle service, and I am sure that the drivers are trying their best to provide the best service possible, it is clear that Pitt needs to take a long hard look at the current situation of the shuttle service. It is also important to mention that about 10 months ago, a woman was struck and killed by a UPMC shuttle on the Pitt campus. While Pitt does not operate these shuttles, it is important to ensure that tragedies like this do not occur again, and that starts with dealing with the egregious distracted driving that myself and others have witnessed while riding the shuttles.